[Dixielandjazz] Library of Congress National Jukebox

[Robert Ringwald]

Library of Congress National Jukebox

National Jukebox: No Nickel Required
Library of Congress project makes 10,000 pre-1925 recordings available free online.
by Randy Lewis
Los Angeles Times, May 11, 2011
The Library of Congress flipped a switch Tuesday that will open a large chunk of
the national archive of more than 3 million music and spoken-word recordings for
online public streaming as part of a new National Jukebox project, a joint venture
between the library and Sony Music that will give free access to thousands of Sony-controlled
recordings long out of circulation because of commercial or copyright issues.
Some of the 10,000 titles streamable at the new National Jukebox website have been
unavailable for more than 100 years, a significant chunk of them because of complex
laws controlling ownership of sound recordings, which did not become subject to federal
copyright laws until 1972. This is the first time the Library of Congress has been
able to stream anything from its collection and provide public access beyond the
walls of its reading rooms in D.C. and Virginia.
Among the highlights are vintage performances by celebrated classical musicians,
including Enrico Caruso and Fritz Kreisler; the first blues recording, "Livery Stable
Blues," made in 1917 by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band; a comedy skit by the vaudeville
team of Gallagher and Shean; speeches of President Teddy Roosevelt; piano performances
by jazz-ragtime pioneer Eubie Blake; and music of the John Philip Sousa Band conducted
by its namesake.
"This really blows the top off of a lot of stuff, doesn't it?" said Chris Sampson,
associate dean of USC's Thornton School of Music. "There are so many angles from
the academic perspective of how this would be a resource. Just in my small corner
of the universe of teaching songwriting, the ability to be able to go to the source
so students can see the tradition of American music and American songwriting, to
see this lineage and to be able to draw upon it is going to be enormous.... To me
that's just gold."
Sony, which claims to control more historical recordings than any other of the three
existing major label groups -- EMI, Warner and Universal music groups -- has made
available all pre-1925 acoustic recordings originally made for the Victor Talking
Machine Co., the vast majority of which are not now in circulation.
The next phase of the project, announced Tuesday morning at the Library of Congress'
offices in Washington, D.C., will add early discs made for Columbia Records, which
also is under the Sony umbrella. The project offers no direct financial gain to Sony,
although the company will retain the rights for the commercial release of anything
newly coming available.
"We're going to release this site with more than 10,000 sides," said Gene DeAnna,
head of the library's recorded sound section. "For this project, we've had to pull
every copy of our Victor acoustic recordings, examine them all and select what we
thought was the best and send it upstairs for possible digitization." DeAnna said
he estimates there are roughly an equal number of Columbia discs that project officials
expect to add to the Jukebox this year.
One major component of the project, which has been about two years in the making,
is a digital discography of every Sony-owned acoustic 78-rpm recording, organized
in a searchable database, prepared at UC Santa Barbara; each entry contains extensive
information ranging from personnel on each recording, the date and locations they
were made down to which take from the recording session is on each disc.
The library's files also will be the source for thousands of pages of documents and
images of original labels, artist biographies and other text and photographic material.
Copyright issues have kept thousands of recordings off the market, even when small
labels have expressed interest in issuing them to the niche audiences they appeal
to.
Because sound recordings didn't get singled out for federal copyright law protection
until 1972, ownership of pre-1972 recordings is complicated by an often impossible-to-unravel
web of state or common laws governing them. A proposal is making its way through
Congress to bring earlier recordings under the 1972 law to enhance public access
and ensure that at some point the recordings go into the public domain. As the law
stands, many recordings dating as far back as 1890 will not enter the public domain
before 2067, 177 years after they were made.
"It's extremely exciting if even a corner of this starts to break the dam and get
these things beyond the walls of Library of Congress," USC's Sampson said.
Library of Congress staff and guest programmers will create playlists by genre, time
period, artist and other themes, and members of the public will be able to submit
their own playlists for consideration for publication on the Jukebox website. Users
also will be able to share their playlists and embed the audio player on social media
websites such as Facebook and MySpace.
The collaboration between Sony and the Library of Congress is intended to keep any
cost to taxpayers to a minimum and to make the streaming files available quickly.
In return, Sony will receive data on which recordings are streamed most frequently
to help determine which may have commercial potential.
The Jukebox Project also will include a digitized version of the Victrola Book of
the Opera, a guide the Victor label published with opera plot outlines, illustrations
and other aids to expand opera fans' knowledge and appreciation, along with offerings
of their own performances of the works described.
"We've scanned the whole book and you can page turn through it, and when you roll
the cursor over a particular recording, you can play that selection," DeAnna said.
"For instance, there's the famous quartet in [Verdi's] 'Rigoletto.' The catalog lists
11 versions, and you can compare Caruso's to [Irish tenor] John McCormack's, or the
Six Brown Brothers' saxophone sextet version. There's also an accordion version.
"You really get the sense there wasn't such a distinction between highbrow and lowbrow;
opera was really part of popular entertainment then," DeAnna said. "Can you imagine
Lady Gaga singing [Mozart's] 'Queen of the Night' on her next CD?"
__________________________________________
'Jukebox' Gives Voice to History
by Justin Jouvenal
Washington Post, May 11, 2011
As crackly recordings of fox trot tunes poured from speakers at the Library of Congress
on Tuesday, Harry Connick Jr. sat motionless except for a single index finger that
pounded out a swinging beat. He was rapt.
"This is all completely new to me," he said, marveling. "I'm going to go home and
play this stuff for my wife and kids."
The Library of Congress and Sony launched a new Web site --
http://www.loc.gov/jukebox/
 -- Tuesday that allows listeners to stream a vast archive of more than 10,000 pre-1925
recordings of music, speeches, poetry and comedy. Much of it hasn't been widely available
since World War I. Call it America's iTunes.
Officials billed it as the largest collection of such historical recordings ever
made available online. The library hopes to add tens of thousands more songs to the
National Jukebox in the coming years.
Connick helped mark the occasion by playing "I'm Just Wild About Harry" on a piano
during a news conference in a library reception room. The jukebox hosts a version
by composer Eubie Blake.
The collection, which is drawn from Sony's back catalogue, is a bewildering assortment
of stuff. Listeners can hear the first-ever jazz release -- "Livery Stable Blues"
by the Original Dixieland Jass Band -- as well as 32 recordings of yodeling. There
is a reading of the classic "Casey at the Bat" and a forgotten speech by President
William Howard Taft on U.S. policy toward Puerto Rico. Most of all, there is loads
and loads of music: Famed opera singer Enrico Caruso and composers Irving Berlin
and George Gershwin are all represented.
"The absence of these recordings has created a sort of cultural amnesia. I think
the jukebox will lead to a rediscovery of these artists," said Patrick Loughney,
who oversees the library's National Audio-Visual Conservation Center campus in Culpeper,
Va.
The jukebox allows listeners to create playlists of their favorite tracks and share
them via Facebook or other sites. The library is creating a series of playlists curated
by historians and well-known artists.
Users can also thumb through a virtual copy of the 1919 version of "The Victrola
Book of the Opera," which describes more than 110 operas, including plot synopses,
illustrations and lists of recordings.
"These recordings are the foundation of the American sound," said James H. Billington,
the librarian of Congress. "They helped transform the musical landscape of the 20th
century."


--Bob Ringwald
www.ringwald.com
Fulton Street Jazz Band
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